But that could not go on forever, because the girl had lived and she grew stronger.

Her bones and her blood would one day become stronger even than gears and oil and grease.

They beat and they grew and they knew — because that is what bones and blood can do.

The little girl ran, at first, but only for a while.

She would turn and face her pursuers.

Then they would become afraid because they saw the green steel in her eye.

Those who ran the nation looked for her every day, all the time.

The work continued.

Every dawn of a new day in the nation dripped with immense possibility.

Bohemian Grove Protests

When you hear about Bohemian Grove, Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commision, the Bilderbergers ... well, it all sounds a bit far out ... like it's not real ... not really happening ... it can't be happening ... although it is happening.

I like KGB because it tells the forgotten story of prisoners and conspiracy theorists and people slaughtered by Bush Sr. in Panama and women and children in jail visiting rooms and other stuff.

I would like to say something about KGB.

I would like to ask why there is such a stink about even talking about the killing of a rich "leader" in a fictional story — and yet, the real-life slaughter of thousands, millions, of poor people goes by without a whisper, a passing breeze in the trees that is gone and forgotten by the time the hot dogs on the grill are ready.

I am not for the killing of George Bush Sr. or George Bush Jr. or George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or George X.Y.Z. Bush.

I am not for killing. Period.

But I do think it is within the parameters of fiction and good taste and morality to allow the characters in a novel to discuss what they might do if they ever discovered how they came to such a desolate place in life.

In KGB we hear from his victims in El Salvador, Panama, prison, jail visiting rooms.

In KGB we have a pronounced preference for the poor, as it should be.

I am not for killing.

I only wish the same were true for George H.W. Bush.

From KGB, first published 2001:

The jail squatted beneath the Woodbury County courthouse, invisible as a good boy to those walking outside, known only for the white vans disappearing into the yawning jaws of the off-white overhead door to the enclosed parking lot.

Each week day morning the door would groan and open, just enough for the van to reappear to take inmates up the street to the federal courthouse.

Those prisoners needing to appear in county court would walk. They would crowd handcuffed and shackled into the elevator in the jail front lobby with two guards for the ride up two floors.

The door would open into the world of color, people in a hurry, people whose days “flew by.” People with smiles on their faces, people with faces serious about nothing.

The door would open and reveal the load of orange men with scraggly, matted hair, men with no reason to shave, who had just walked into a department store holding the hand of a little girl and the girl asked the sleeping man what she could have and he said, nothing, and he woke up in jail with real tears coming down his cheeks.

The door split in two and revealed to the hurried people a crowded little room of orange men who were the reason for the huge building of marble and concrete and stone and hardwood.

These almost-men with their bowed heads and tangled hands propped in front of their waists like they were hiding a wet spot shuffled crossway over the lanes of traffic with difficulty, like passing through a cornfield against the rows.

Two brown men stood on the sides of the orange men, keeping them from the hurried people who carried papers concerning the lives and children of the orange men.

In three seconds, four, the orange and brown men slipped inside the lonesome door that led to the damp holding tank outside the rear courtroom door.

Above the stomach-clenching courthouse, after the orange men had been locked in yet another small room, an eagle played on the waves of heat rising from the small city. She dipped and lowered her wings and never worried about being spotted. The focus of the ground creatures was down.

The eagle admired the town square pattern around the courthouse, the row of barbershops and salons: Sam’s Shop, Wave This, the corner grocery store, bookstore, city offices, Wilbur Aalf’s Library, and five banks.

The eagle let the heat from the downtown mid-day traffic take her up another whoosh! She saw the schools, public on the east side and Catholic downtown. The eagle loved to admire her black and white feathers in the sun and her face reflecting in the wing mirror, so far above the ground.

The ground.

The eagle imagined Sioux City as a place for bovine types, carpenters, salesmen and ministers who held only shared thoughts, when they told each other what they thought, they always already knew.

These people. Such times.

Just lucky to be able to be able to soar above all that.

The smell from the wiener factory, sweet like burnt molasses over manure pancakes, kept the eagle from the south edge of town. She climbed a winding staircase.

The motion below slowed and slowed until it stopped.

From Terror Nation

Charlie Johnson is the main character in TN. Charlie is a former sports reporter for a small Iowa daily.

After he retires he begins to write anti-Bush letters to the editor.

He is taken to the local mental hospital for a "check-up."

Here is one of Charlie's letters to the Saint Smith paper.

Dear Editor:

I have a neighbor across the street.

We have watched each other out our front windows for forty years.

Their son played ball in our yard.

Last week that son's boy came home in a body bag in a box in the belly of a big Boeing, back from Baghdad.

That is nothing to "b" joking about.

I am not.

But I will not "b" quiet, either.

I have talked to my neighbors since then, on the sidewalk in front of the house, and again on the side steps of St. Mark's after Mass.

They say Timothy died because he loved freedom.

That's nonsense. He loved basketball.

They say he had his head blown off his shoulders, his legs cut off at the knees, lost his hands, to make us free.

Of course, that's not true. But what else do a heart-broken grandmother and grandfather have to hold on to?

Someone needs to speak for Timothy, perhaps speak to him, to tell him the truth, because we lied to him his whole life.

Timothy died because of us.

Me. You.

We told him it was good to go.

Fr. Cyril, either by his legendary silence, or the flag next to the altar, said it was good to go kill children and call that fighting for freedom.

She never met Timothy, but Cindy Sampson, our new editor from Iowa State, told him the same by the stories she ran, and the headlines and the photos and editorials, so patriotic, so deceptive, so self-serving.

We all told him, go, go, it's a good thing to do.

We whispered, go kill, go shoot, go murder and steal, and we'll all call it "fighting for freedom."

And when we hear in the big city newspapers and TV after thousands and thousands have died that there was no reason to die — we'll dig our heels in the front lawn grass and still call it fighting for freedom.

And when our grandchildren hit the ball into the graveyard and come back and ask us about the headstone with the flag on it and the same last name as theirs — who was that?

We'll bite our tongues and clench our fists and look anywhere but into their trusting eyes, and we'll tell them Timothy died fighting for our freedom.

Store Detective, looking for terrorists, securing the homeland on the front lines.
As always, just trying to do my part to ensure the freedom of my fellow Americans.

The whole thing is planned by licensed Christians in churches, in chambers, in Congress, to keep poor people and their children from having Frosted Flakes in the morning.

I am looking for Mexicans who might be illegally alive, who do not have the proper stamp on the papers in their pocket, and thus deserve to be separated from their weeping children and sent to wherever we want to send them in a hot, crowded white INS van piloted by highly trained, intelligent professionals with their uniformed butts smearing Ho-Ho’s into the vinyl seats, who could have been anything in life, really, but made the conscious decision to drive around in the desert sucking down dust for breakfast.

The whole thing is planned by licensed Christians in churches, in chambers, in Congress, to keep poor people and their children from having Frosted Flakes in the morning.

Because ... their crawling from zero to one might conceivably hamper us from getting from ten to eleven.

If you can see me from where you are seated you know that I am also sitting, on the floor, in the corner between the white milk and the tortillas, at the far end of the Mexican Foods Aisle.

It is my charge to find any Islamiscists, Hispanunists, or other terror-type individuals.

I am also to tackle anyone I suspect of being from Nebraska. Gregg says.
This is where I will find my insurgents.

And though I do not understand their language, I know enough to know when they are hiding something, or planning to meet with Jesus Iowa to topple the towers, collapse Casey’s, dump the Dairy Queen, pillage Pizza Hut.

That jabber-jabber is all about planning with other foreign types to seek out sales on box cutters, steal leaves.

These they get here have dust and weird stickers on their shoes from walking all the way up through El Paso and shit, and Agua Prieta, Douglas, all those off-brand towns.

And they have to leave their home towns behind or maybe, probably grandma and their new puppy.

Whatever. My grandparents probably did the same thing.

I can almost taste the salsa in the jars across the aisle.

I like Mexican food. Everybody does.

I've never had any other terror-type food, except Fred claims the sandwich came from Iraq.

That sounds like bullcrap, but I wonder if I would like Afghan pizza ... or Nebraska corn.

I am undercover, as per usual.

I am wearing a big, wide sombrero.

My head is drooping to my knees.

But I am not sleeping. Sometimes I am sleeping. Sometimes snoring. I get a beeper.

I wouldn't mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country.
— RICHARD PRYOR

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
— DICK GREGORY

Those images of dust rising and falling again when that astronaut steps on the planet could not be accurate because there's no gravity on the moon, and how could there be all those pictures with shadows when the moon is completely dark? — DICK GREGORY

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to god.
— LENNY BRUCE

I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.
— LENNY BRUCE

We are living in the future, I'll tell you how I know, I read it in a magazine fifteen years ago. We're all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds. And wearing turquoise jewelry — we're standing in soup lines. We are standing in soup lines.
— JOHN PRINE

If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
— LENNY BRUCE

Sometimes we get soaked. We’re pretty close to the action. We act like we like it that way.

Al’s got the beeper in case we need to call for backup towels. His wife’s home most of the day.
Tomorrow she’s got shit to do.

By now the lifeguards don’t wear that white stuff on their noses, everything au naturel.

We’ve got sunglasses from the Ben Franklin store, orange terror vests and shorts, and special “Homeland” orange hardhats. That was Al’s idea. They came from the state highway maintenance shed from the big patch job they had last summer out by the Go-Kart track. If it gets too hot ... well, Don’s going to ask a councilman who’s his neighbor if we can take them off while the pool has rest break, get
some breeze.

Some ladies get up quick when they are napping on their stomachs and they get splashed, and maybe they have that one string not tied ... Milt had to go home early yesterday.

It gets to a guy ... this work is not for everyone.

And we’ve each got a terror whistle on a string around our necks.

Fred blew his, loud, for about a minute straight just a few minutes ago when Mrs. de Champlain walked past on her way to the water fountain. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.

Some days it’s about all a guy can do not to blow the damn thing all day long.
Don keeps his in his mouth all the time, like a referee. Does not move, scratch, nothing.

He loves freedom that darn much. He is so dedicated, an inspiration to us all.
It’s what we need at times like these.

Girls and guys and dogs and cats with stuff stuck in their mouths staring.
Looking blankly over the prairie, into space, across the living room, the kitchen table — keeping an eye out — if we are truly to be free.

From "The Truth," published by Writers Publishing Cooperative of New Hampshire.

And I Laugh

There's a photo on the Internet that makes me laugh.

A little brown boy holding a silent scream forever in four-color.

Ha.

The horrified little fellow now has no arms or legs, or brothers, sisters or parents, and I laugh out loud.

I laugh at the Marines, being all they could possibly be in God's creation, at their tough-man commercials. The Army of One. What a hoot.

The rough-guy coaches and players who let this boy die — what comedy watching them feel strong while letting the real battles be fought by little guys with sticks and bicycles.

The boy has a bandaged head.

He looks so scared his hair might turn white, as in a Hitchcock film, and it sort of makes me chuckle.

I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.

I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.

I laugh at the well-schooled and coifed newspaper columnists with their earnest close-cropped photos in four hundred papers read by forty million people in forty million cities.

And I laugh.

The boy is flat on his back on dirty cement, with his stubs hastily wrapped in Ace bandages, surrounded by the world trying to get a look, by photographers and people on their way to work and out to dinner.

We are nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing!

Because this boy now has no arms.

No legs.

Nothing we will do today will mean a thing because we have ripped the arms and legs from this boy as if he were a fly and we are us.

This boy who could be my boy, lying there at the feet of the world and the world looking the other way.

Goddamn us.

Please.

Give us what we deserve.

If you are a just God, rain down fire and hell upon our heads. Lightning bolts upon our backyard decks and rivers of excrement down our smooth, well-scrubbed streets.

Please, dear God we pray.

When I awoke this morning I thought it essential to the world order and being right, and a good person, that I shave, help out with the dishes, be on time, and drive on the right side of the road.

Do a good job. Be pleasant.

Smile.

But now I just can't stop laughing.

The world thinks it still matters, and that's kind of funny in a way.

There, the flag flying over the Catholic elementary school and the yellow ribbons tied to the light poles on both sides of Main Street.

Stray cats wearing yellow ribbons around their necks, roaming the night, looking both ways before crossing the street, as if it mattered.

You are never so wrong as when you damage a young boy.

We sit down here like the Who's in Whoville celebrating the coming of War Season while this boy lies on the cold floor.

No. I'm looking at the map on my wall that my son made in fifth grade.

It is Iowa.

Where we have high school baseball, the corn is 'bout head-tall, and we don't eat it until fall.

Did you know that there were bombs that went off inside the federal building in Oklahoma City and that the ATF officers in that building were told not to go to work that day?

Did you know that the FBI covered up the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993?

The American journalism textbook on my floor, no, I guess it's outside somewhere, actually, it's in the trash can, no, to be honest, the trash man hauled it away ten years ago — says that I am supposed to follow here with a joke about Bigfoot to show you that I am grounded, sane, and that these theories are immature hogwash.

The next time you hear or read an American "journalist" doing that, probably later today, it would be better to find something else to read or watch, you are wasting your time with that guy. His picture is probably in an American journalism textbook.

Well, it is also true that I don't "know" it either — whether the FBI did it, or the ATF did it — but I think mysteries are intoxicating. I can't help but be curious about the possibilities.

There are lots of things about living today that are not so great: Dick Cheney ... and, umm ... Dick Cheney.

But to have the Internet, that is golden, because it gives us alternative news, opinions, possibilities.

Geezuz, back when I was getting fat in the '60s we didn't have a chance.

We ate what mom put in front of us and we believed whatever anybody told us. Anybody except James Sitzman. He lived over on the other side of Central Park. What a freaking liar.

Well, I see here in the newspaper that "TV ratings keep dropping."

You believe that?

By the looks in the eyes of the folks at Bomgaars, down at Casey's, and over at Hardee's, we're not doing nothing but watching TV.

But there it is, right in the paper, and how you gonna dispute that?

A few weeks ago, NBC's average prime-time audience of 4.8 million people was the smallest since at least 1991.

"It's likely you'd have to go back to the days of black and white sets to find a smaller number."

Well, Ugly Betty notwithstanding, maybe the shitty state of television will lead to its demise, much as we can only hope that six-dollar gas will end the age of the automobile dinosaur.

I am an American. I have big dreams.

And like the rest of us, I have been damaged beyond repair by television. Look at me. I am a mess.

I grew up on TV and eating ... ice cream ... ice cream bars ... ice cream sandwiches ... sitting on the floor of our home on Sixth Street in Norfolk, Nebraska ... watching TV. I weighed four hundred pounds by the time I was in fourth grade. No problem. Get bigger pants.

I knew my ice cream.

And I knew all about Barney, Goober, Andy, Gunsmoke, I Dream Of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian.

I knew my ice cream.

And I knew all about Barney, Goober, Andy, Gunsmoke, I Dream Of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian.

Who can forget Bonanza — the episode Hoss And The Leprechauns. A classic. Like Grapes of Wrath.

We always watched Johnny Carson, of course. He was from Norfolk, graduated from Norfolk High School. Hometown boy who done good. He done real goood.

I'd lay on the floor facing the TV, a bowl of chocolate swirl in front of me, rolling over on my back during the commercials to shovel in a few scoops, then roll back for more instruction from Don Rickles, Frank Sinatra, Burt Reynolds, Bob Newhart, Bob Hope, Brian Keith.

In the forward for my novel The American Dream I talk about my parents, Milosh and Isabel. They were Czech and Irish. They moved to Norfolk from Winner, South Dakota when dad got his big break to be an engineer for the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad.

They grabbed each other in the South Dakota wind and held on. They were true believers in the American dream, I suppose, though they would not have put it that way.

More likely they just believed in working and going to church and mowing the lawn and taking care of your car and watching the ball game or Bonanza if it was on.

Dad spent part of his career on the Long Pine run, staying overnight at the motel near the tracks and fishing for trout. He brought fish home and maybe a foul ball from the amateur games in Winner when he got a chance to go there and see his brother Jimmy, home from the Pacific war, now with a wife and his own family. Another brother, Albert, served with Patton and later went to South Omaha to work in a box factory. Frank went to California. Molly just went away. Dad didn't go to the war because his job with the railroad was considered vital to the war effort.

They said Dad was good enough at shortstop to go pro, but he didn't. Maybe he had to work. Hauled cases at the pop factory before the C&NW. They did the best they could. It's sad, a sad state of affairs for a whole nation.

Everyone does the best he can and we end up bombing Hiroshima. Dad cuts the lawn each Saturday morning on his one chance to rest and there go a thousand people in Chile, mowed down by our own CIA.

Mom calls us in to supper and poof! Laos is toast.

Us kids sneak outside for another round of playing after supper. We play hide and seek, catch lightning bugs, tell ghost stories and leave the screen door open just a peep.

A couple hundred intelligent poor people in El Salvador are hustled out of their beds and shot.

In Norfolk the media was The Norfolk Daily News, WJAG Radio and the Omaha World-Herald.

There is no way for someone just growing up, or someone who has not been much of anywhere else to know that those outlets distort the news. They tell the story in the way they want it to be told.

We suffered and bled along with the perils of Otis The Drunk, but did not have a clue about the people being murdered by our own government in Chile. And nobody told us. We weren't supposed to know.

There really is no way of knowing — not some fat kid who only has eyes for Strawberry Swirl — that what is on TV is not great and true and the only real reality worth understanding.

It wasn't until I left Norfolk, to go to the seminary in Minnesota, then Washington, D.C., then New York, later prison, that I began to understand what a warped vision and body my upbringing had saddled me with.

Later on, I even questioned Johnny Carson himself.

I studied the JFK assassination and learned that attorney Jim Garrison had been a guest on The Tonight Show, talking about his investigation. I listened to the recording on the Internet of Carson grilling Garrison.

I found Carson's address and wrote to him, asking him, Norfolkan-to-Norfolkan — what the fuck is up, dude?

I am originally from Norfolk, Nebr., graduated from NHS in 1973. Recently I had a chance to listen to the tape of your interview with attorney Jim Garrison. I don't recall watching the live interview, but very well could have as watching your show before bed was our regular routine, as it was for many others.

As a fellow Norfolkan, I am curious as to why you treated Garrison as you did. I probably will not get the chance to contact you twice, so I will be frank right away. You sounded as if you were acting as a spokesman for someone else. Really. Were you protecting the real killers of Kennedy?

Of course, you were. What else can I say, but that it is obvious now with almost forty years of perspective. The Warren Commission was a joke and Garrison was on to something. Something frightening to be sure. But why did you have so much allegiance to the plotters and none to your dead president? Because he could not pay you from the grave? Is it as simple as that?

Thanks in part to you we have been forced to live in Disneyland since 1963, where everything is unreal, everything entertainment and illusion.

Please tell me, as I will never know myself: Is wealth and power worth the sublimation of the truth?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Mike Palecek

Johnny Carson's Response:

March 9, 2001

Mike Palecek
702 6th Avenue
Sheldon, Iowa 51201

Dear Mr. Palecek,

I'm sending you a copy of a letter I recently received to make you aware that some ignorant asshole is sending out letters over your signature.

You should look into this.

Sincerely,
Johnny Carson

"And then so many people act like this was a good country at one time. America ain't never been no good. That's an illusion. It is the most filthy, ungodly, unspiritual heathen nation that's ever been put together in the history of the planet and the reason they can do what they doin' to you is you stupid enough to believe that somebody gonna cut somebody else some slack.
— DICK GREGORY

"I think it's interesting that our government would obviously lie to us so blatantly for so long and we do absolutely nothing abut it. I think that's interesting in what is ostensibly a democracy."
— BILL HICKS

On the Westside, on Seventh Avenue, a child lay in the street, on its side, motionless. His mother sat on the edge of the road holding the other one.

Next to the mother stood a cardboard cutout of a smiling man with black hair in a white shirt rolled to his elbows and a bright red tie, gesturing with thumb tucked inside pointer finger.

A tape recording played from the cutout:
We will take on the complicated problem of coordinating summertime lawn watering schedules; we will stop pre-dawn jaywalking by exercisers. Vote for me and help Homeland. My party is dedicated to doing whatever it takes to bring justice and peace and prosperity!

Sweat dripped down the cardboard candidate.

An F-16 Perpetrator, with a Sun God flag on its side, roared, still in the distance, and then appeared. In the same instant it dropped its bombs expertly on the house across the road, which exploded and caught fire.

The mother leaned and reached to grab the arm of the child in the street with blood running out its anus, and dragged it closer to her.

Lions yawned in the grass nearby and Raga music drifted down the block.

Down the road came a shining red pickup full of men and women. On the sides were magnetic signs: Pastors LOVE Dick

The ministers chanted and sang and fellowshipped as F-16s, zooming at treetop level, tore up the neighborhood with machine gun fire.

The preachers pointed at the mother struggling to feed one child while pulling her older one out of the path of the oncoming religious leaders.

“God loves you, child,” they shouted.

What do you
think about
the whisper
and the look?

The Whisper
The Look

The defining moment of a generation.

What does it mean?
What's happening?

Is this a great country?
Or what?

What is Andy Card saying
to George W. Bush
at Booker Elementary
the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?

Did he say, "America is under attack."
Did he say, "the second plane has hit."

What does the look say?
Is he surprised?
Is he frightened?
Is he acting?
Is he playing his role?
Is he gathering himself
for the steely resolve
needed to lead a nation at war?

A Lone Strikerby Robert Frost

The swinging mill bell changed its rate
To tolling like the count of fate,
And though at that the tardy ran,
One failed to make the closing gate.

There was a law of God or man
That on the one who came too late
The gate for half an hour be locked,
His time be lost, his pittance docked.
He stood rebuked and unemployed.

The straining mill began to shake.
The mill, though many-many-eyed,
Had eyes inscrutably opaque;
So that he couldn’t look inside
To see if some forlorn machine
Was standing idle for his sake.
(He couldn’t hope its heart would break.)

And yet he thought he saw the scene:
The air was full of dust of wool.
A thousand yarns were under pull,
But pull so slow, with such a twist,
All day from spool to lesser spool,
It seldom overtaxed their strength;
They safely grew in slender length.

And if one broke by any chance,
The spinner saw it at a glance.
The spinner still was there to spin.
That’s where the human still came in.
Her deft hand showed with finger rings
Among the harplike spread of strings.

She caught the pieces end to end
And, with a touch that never missed,
Not so much tied as made them blend.
Man’s ingenuity was good.
He saw it plainly where he stood,
Yet found it easy to resist.

He knew another place, a wood,
And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs;
And if he stood on one of these,
‘Twould be among the tops of trees,
Their upper branches round him wreathing,
Their breathing mingled with his breathing.

If — if he stood! Enough of ifs!
He knew a path that wanted walking;
He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
A thought that wanted further thinking;
A love that wanted re-renewing.
Nor was this just a way of talking
To save him the expense of doing.
With him it boded action, deed.

The factory was very fine;
He wished it all the modern speed.
Yet, after all, ‘twas not divine,
That is to say, ‘twas not a church.

He never would assume that he’d
Be any institution’s need.

But he said then and still would say,
If there should ever come a day
When industry seemed like to die
Because he left it in the lurch,
Or even merely seemed to pine
For want of his approval, why,
Come get him — they knew where to search.

Let's Build The U.S. Peace Memorial

by Del "Abe" Jones

We have memorials for heroes
Who have fought in wars and died
For great generals and others
To express our nations pride.

From the American Revolution
Until the wars we fight today
Where we honor those people
For, the ultimate price, they pay.

We have statues of politicians
And the leaders of our land
Monuments for almost everything
Some small, some huge and grand.

They are made of stone — cast in bronze
Carved in mountainsides and wood
Some are fanciful, some somber
As we celebrate all those, we should.

But, if you just think about it
And if you search, everywhere
You will see that one is missing
And sadly, so many don’t seem to care.

Where do we credit all those folks
Who stand for peace and good will
Who speak out against those wars
That maim, destroy and kill?

Where do we credit all those folks
Who stand for peace and good will
Who speak out against those wars
That maim, destroy and kill?

Some will say, “It’s unpatriotic!”
To try to find a different course
To resolve the worlds conflict
With sane and rational discourse.

“They don’t support the troops!”
“They want to give up and surrender!”
“They don’t want to fight for freedom!”
“It’s just passive words, they tender!?

That could not be further from the truth
It’s because, they, honestly do care
What’s wrong with peaceful resolution
Especially, when it is just and fair?

Let us all honor those peacekeepers
Who would strive to find a better way
To resolve the worlds differences
And end, the terrible price we all pay.

They deserve their own monument
For their valiant fight against all war
Striving for world peace and freedom
Isn’t that, what America stands for?

So, let's build the US Peace Memorial
For people of the world to come and see
The people of our nation, long for peace
Across every land, where all live free.

In the weeks leading up to 911 Bush and Cheney were at Bush’s ranch.
They were doing the final stages of planning.

Bush is not a genius, but if he has lines to rehearse,
the dumb fuck can act.

He knew what was going on.
He was performing in a play produced by his father and his father’s friends,
also his friends, by now.

Plausible deniability,
don’t they call it?

Cheney is in the bunker talking to him and her, directing this and that.
If he gets caught there, they don’t all get caught.

George Senior spent the night before in the White House,
talking about fishing and golf.

He then had a meeting the next day with Bin Laden’s brother.

Warren Buffet has a meeting that morning at Offutt AFB
with a bunch of executives from the World Trade Center
who would have died that morning otherwise,
and then George Junior ends up there later in the day,
obviously by random choice.

This day was in the works for years, while Clinton was in office.

They worked and planned every day for years.

Nothing about it was random.

You believe that?

“Why didn’t anyone talk?”

Bill sat up in his chair,
uncrossed his legs, now laced
his big, basketball-palming
hands behind his ol’ nappy white head.

How do you explain it?

You know that I can only guess, don’t you, I said.

You understand we’re just talking here, before all this ends unfortunately.
Some know, some don’t, some are following orders,
duty, honor, all that crap.

The big boys.

Well, they are focused, on the target, like a laser, have been their whole lives.

What would you do if you had the actual chance to rule the world?

What if that apple was right before your eyes and all you had to do was pick it?

Would you?

How do you understand it?

If honesty and righteousness and piety
had not ruined these guys’ career by now,
it was not going to at this point.

They made their peace with whomever long ago.

Just like every body.

What keeps you from walking down to the bank and taking out all the money in savings and give it to the guy begging on the corner that you see every morning?

Try to grasp it.

You can’t.

Just like trying to understand heaven and forever and ever and ever.

I don’t know.

But you don’t do it. You didn’t do it yesterday morning, or this morning, and you won’t do it tomorrow morning.

You won’t ever.

Understand.

Now Ron crossed his arms across his chest.

I could feel his thoughts pressing on my chest like my grandpa’s heart attack.

I pointed a finger at him, put the thumb up, cocked and fired, twice.

The killing.

The 3-day event will culminate
in a rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield
Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone considering risking arrest
on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training
session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone coming from out of town
and need housing
contact the DMCW for
hospitality.

*Anyone considering risking arrest on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone coming from out of town
and need housing
contact the DMCW for
hospitality.

*Anyone considering risking arrest on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

------------------------

— Howard Zinn

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.

It's been
a long road.

From a stolen election, to a government-planned attack on Sept. 11 2001, to two invasions based on lies, based on power, on money.

What else?

To a murdered Senator, the one standing in their way, who would not be moved.

We didn't want it to come. We marched. We e-mailed, we sang, we wrote, we got arrested.

But it came anyway.

And it is still here.

...

The New American Dream is a "Yellow Ribbon Free Zone."

We do not support the troops.

We do not support fighter planes flying over the Super Bowl.
Why?

And why "The Star Spangled Banner?"

Steve Earle's "F The FBI" is actually a song more in line with a free nation, a nation that at least wants to be free.

Let the children singthat to start each school day and we've at least got a start.

The troops are not defending our freedom. They are thugs for the empire.Ooo-rah.

We heard all about "putting a boot up their ass" from Toby Keith.

He's a brave man, to encourage other men to kill men, women and children — for no reason.

The real patriots were the Dixie Chicks. We all know that now.

Why didn't we know it then?Are we idiots?Cowards?

Are we evil? Are we a virus with shoes, as Bill Hicks suggested?Just asking.

Protesters protect our freedom.That's the truth.

Think Medea Benjamin not John McCain.

A hero does not drop bombs on people who are trying to live their lives.

We need inspiration, something to foster a desire to drive way across the country just to soak it all in — rather than just a desire to leave the country and escape the tired predictability and hordes of American idiots.

We need a new dream, something real, solid to believe in.

Truth in our history books.

Bread on the table of the poor.

There really, honestly, are truths and riches out there we have not yet imagined, growing this moment in the fertile minds of those who will lead us.

The New Underground Railroad

Judy Plank, letting her little light shine, being not afraid, fighting for what her heart knows is right —resisting the border patrol, the Minutemen, the fences, the prevailing wind— in favor of those who seek a better life, who just want a chance at the American Dream — perhaps like the fathers, mothers, grandparents, great-grandparents of every one now living in the United States.

The murder of Robert F. Kennedy by agents
within the United States government

James Douglass is at work on a series of books, which when completed will finally give us firm footing as we seek to move into the next century. One of those will be about the murder of Robert F. Kennedy as he sought the presidency in 1968.

In this top button issue piece we take a look at an article Douglass published in 1999, an interview with a witness to history.

The murder of John F. Kennedy by agents
within the United States government

For those of us who sat in the classroom, breathless, shortly after lunch recess on Nov. 22, 1963, only to hear our teachers tell us the president had been killed — well, we have waited our whole lifetimes for someone to tell us the truth about what happened that day.

We waited and waited and waited — for James Douglass' "JFK & The Unspeakable — Why He Died and Why It Matters."

Leonard Peltier & me

Remember Leonard Peltier when you wake up from a long, cozy night's sleep in America.

Recall what it is like to really fight, to really care, to really suffer — for truth and for people — and for America.

Art, Truth & Politics

by Harold Pinter

War & Social Justice

by Howard Zinn

Being Poor

... an essay

People are poor for a reason.
Because other people have too much.
We have prisons because we refuse to share our stuff.
Wars are fought over stuff.
People die every day over stuff.

Our first thought every morning is about whether we have enough stuff and what we will have to do today to secure our stuff...
— and whether we can do it again, or not.

"The battle ... has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society ... You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name."

— Arundhati Roy

We are Americans

It's an amazing time to be alive.
We survived Kate Smith on the radio.
We survived Bush, though not all of us.
It's morning, time to wake up.

There are no longer any questions we cannot ask.
Nothing about our country we are not allowed to know.
We are Americans.
This is our country.

This morning we take it back — from the CIA, the military, the bosses, the Warren Commission, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the 9/11 Commission.

Our children will study lies no more.

Did George W. Bush, his father, his father's friends, actually steal the elections of 2000 and 2004?

And, if they did that ... why would they ever stop ... at anything?

Just asking.

Did George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, et al. conspire to commit murder and treason in the 9/11 attacks, in order to again be able to lie about anthrax, uranium and WMD, and torture — in order to attack Iraq, and make millions, billions of dollars?

We want to know,
we need to know,
we deserve to know ...

We want to know, we need to know, we deserve to know who killed Bobby, Martin, JFK, Wellstone.

Did we land on the moon? Is Bigfoot real? How about UFOs?

C'mon, there are no wrong questions, remember? No secrets in anyone's land of the free.

How do we explain to our children how the war on drugs goes with "this Bud's for you?"

Prisons, poverty, trees, wind power — we can talk about all of it — because we are Americans again.

We are not the subjects of the FBI or CIA or the U.S. Army or Wall Street.

We do not torture, kill children, bomb, rape, mutilate. We are Americans.

We are Americans.

Why is Leonard Peltier in prison?

Why did we fund death squads in El Salvador? We overthrew elected governments in Chile, Iran, Guatamala? Really? Why?

We deserve to know. We need to know. We have to know.

So that we may tell the world.
We are Americans.

"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."

— Thomas Paine

“I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” — John F. Kennedy

The following excerpts are from an interview with comedian Mort Sahl in the April 1-15, 1968 issue of The Argo.

Argo: What’s the extent of the conspiracy and why is the government so desperate to keep the truth from the American public?

Mort Sahl: We have determined that elements of the Central Intelligence Agency planned the execution and killed the president. Lee Oswald attended those meetings planning it. He was the only non-CIA man at the meeting.

And he worked for the FBI … we still later find Oswald saying, “I was a patsy,” in the Dallas Police Station. The “elements” are in the Central Intelligence Agency.

They don’t want to lose their power. And they don’t want to fall.
It has become government by hoodlum.

And I don’t blame them. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to fall, either. I would pull out all the stops, as they have.

Argo: Why is the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?

Sahl: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy’s life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III.

There’s been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I’m afraid a great deal of hope was interred with his remains.

She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism.

Argo: What is the long hard night that America must go through you’ve spoken of?

Sahl: She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism.

If she can hang on long enough, Americans may yetlive in the country in which they were born. And that is the country structured by Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.

Argo: What is the renaissance following this long, hard night that you also spoke about?

Sahl: We’ll start pursuing the American dream again. I don’t know if we’ll ever realize it, but we’re supposed to have the right to pursue it. And that’s what this country is. It’s an active exercise in man reaching his upper limit, as they used to say in the math department.

And the renaissance will be that a groundswell of public opinion will flush out the rascals because the CIA has infiltrated every area of our national life.

I’m afraid the country they subverted best was the United States … be they in the various right-wing churches or the Dallas Police Department.

—Perry Adams of The Argo interviews Mort Sahl at “The Hungry i” in San Francisco, Monday, March 18, 1968

"Unless we have an awareness of Kennedy's story, this story will be repeated, and I mean repeated in the worst consequences of Obama being assassinated, or being pushed very, very hard by advisors for war into decisions that he either has to resist at the risk of his life or has to carry out at the risk of everybody else's life. ...

"If we walk around with some kind of idea that Barack Obama is going to save the world,
that's a bunch of nonsense."

— Jim Douglass

"If we walk around with some kind of idea that Barack Obama is going to save the world, that's a bunch of nonsense. That cannot happen except through an understanding ... a redemption of us as a world from the powers of violence, and of war, and of oppression, and of manipulation, and of lying, as the CIA, and our propaganda forces, has been doing for decades.

"If we're going to be liberated from those forces, that's up to us. Obama can't do it as the President of the United States. It has to be a movement, an international movement.

"And especially a movement of consciousness of the past, and education, on what really happened to John F. Kennedy, so that it is not repeated. I believe it will be repeated, unless we understand and educate ourselves about the past, and we are way, way short of that right now."

You Gotta See This

THE Worst Press Conference E-e-eeever

The Apollo 11 Post-flight interview
Why aren't these guys happy? If they are not happy about being the first men on the moon, just what would make these guys happy? If only kiwi-strawberry had been invented back then.

"There are things we don't or can't understand. A reasonable man, a healthy man ... a sane man ... when he encounters the inexplicable ... forgets about it."

— Maurice Minnifield,Northern Exposure

"Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon."

"They say dreams are the windows of the soul — take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts."

"Today, a belated apology to the much maligned Chicken Little. It turns out you were right — the sky is falling. The National Space Administration informs us that Uncle Sam's Com-Sat 4 satellite is in a rapidly decaying orbit. That's their way of saying a ton of angry space trash is heading back home at fifteen thousand miles an hour.

"To that unsung triceratops and all its kin,
here's a song for you ..."

"What does that make me think of?

"Makes me think of a triceratops, innocently munching a palm frond when out of the sky, whammo, a meteor sucker punches old mother Earth. Next thing you know, that triceratops, along with a hundred and seventy-five million years of dinosaur evolution, is nothing but history.

"To that unsung triceratops and all its kin, here's a song for you ..."

— Chris In The Morning Northern Exposure

"But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."

It places George Bush Sr. in the CIA, within the plot to kill Kennedy, within the machinations of big oil, and the CIA to run the world.

It places George Bush Sr. in the CIA,
within the plot to kill Kennedy, within the machinations of big oil, and the CIA to run the world.

These people.

These people ... "public service" is the furthest thing from their minds.

From the front book jacket:

With George W. Bush's departure from Washington, a dark chapter in American politics comes to an end?

Or does it?

Family of Secrets reveals that what most of us believe about the Bush dynasty is only a fragment of a larger reality.

Indeed, the same forces that put Bush-Cheney into power are still very much at work, exerting a stealthy dominance over he mechanisms of democracy, regardless of who occupies the White House.

From the conclusion:

Time and again, there has been a rush to bury inquiries into the most perplexing events of our time, along with a determination to subject dissenting views to ridicule.

And the media weren't just enabling these efforts; they were complicit in them — not least by labeling anyone who dared to subject conventional views to a fresh and quizzical eye as a conspiracy theorist.

I'll admit it. Fear of being so labeled has haunted me throughout this work. It's been an internal censor that I've had to resist again and again.

And also an external one, as friends within the journalistic establishment reviewed my findings, found them both credible and highly disturbing, and yet urged me to stay away from them for my own good.

"... as friends within the
journalistic establishment
reviewed my findings, found them
both credible and highly disturbing,
and yet urged me to stay
away from them
for my own good."

... the boundaries of permissable
thought are staked out and enforced.

I began to realize that I was experiencing the very thing the process is designed to induce.

The boundaries of permissable thought are staked out and enforced.

We accept the conventional narratives because they are repeated and approved, while conflicting ones are scorned.

Isn't this how authoritarian regimes work?

They get inside your mind so that overt repression becomes less necessary.

The defense industry and the aligned growth business of "intelligence." provide muscle.

On a lower level is an arm of enablers — the campaign functionaries, the PR people, lawyers.

This was the Bush enterprise. The Bushes embodied it as a dynasty, but it is larger than them, and will prove more enduring.

Deception resides at the very center of our national psyche. It affects us in incalculable ways, from decisions in the voting booth to our own life choices.

I like Joe Coffee because it tells the truth about the Democratic Party and about farmer revolutionaries and farm kitchen tables.

Still available from Amazon.

Twins

I like Twins because it talks about a prison burning and about the Twin Cities, which I love, and about robbing Twin Cities banks to give the money to the poor on Hennepin Ave.

Two twin brothers, one a revolutionary priest, the other the warden of the local federal penitentiary, battle in the streets and from the rooftops. It's a sibling rivalry, rich vs. poor, yuppies against the gangs of the ghetto, the Kiwanis Club meets the prison yard weightlifters. It's walleye sizzling in the crisp north woods air and dirty diapers in the gutter. It's food on a stick, a seat on the third-baseline, and halftime mud wrestling between Dorothy Day and Mary Tyler Moore, in this one-of-a-kind American metropolis.

A Portion of "Twins"

“I bring it up because it is what is on my mind.

Many of you do not remember John Kennedy, many of us remember nothing but.

“Where do these thoughts of John Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King Jr. come from? All mortal men, surely sinners. But in my mind heroes, just as Jesus is a hero of mine. And to be a hero of mine you have to do one thing.”

“Don’t seek to live so damned long that you finally have to be unplugged. Make the bastards come get you — make their terrible plans, hunt you down and fill you full of holes, just as they did our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mars put up his crooked right pointer finger, the finger that had been stomped on. He held it over his head and out toward the congregation.

“You have to go and get yourself killed.”

He held the finger in the air until it became the focus of the room. Couples with their arms inter-locked on the pew behind the heads of their children stared at the finger. Mars meant to be pointing straight up, toward the ceiling in exclamation,
when actually his finger was more of a comma.

“You can’t score six touchdowns on one night and be my hero.”

Mars spoke loudly, pausing, turning this way and that, using all of his homiletics textbook skills.

“You cannot have twenty-inch biceps and thirty-inch waist and be my hero.”

He stopped and estimated three seconds, impatient to keep going.

“You cannot go to work each day and pay your bills and keep your kids in college and your wife happy and play errorless third base for the church softball team and be my hero.”

He put his hand down as parenthesis.

“I see these guys who drive their little cars into the lot at the elevator every morning and leave every night. They do this without fail for ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Maybe forty years! They drive in each morning at the same time, they leave at the same time. Same route, look the same way before turning, park the car in the same spot at work, same place at home.

“Now, to some people that image is one of supreme heroism, the loyalty, the work ethic, the steady nature of the man going to work each day, earning his daily bread for his family, that they may prosper and live and grow and also maintain their routine.

“I am weird. I see it as cowardice. I really do, and I know some of you are going to have trouble with that. That’s okay. I see it as immoral, boorish, dull behavior.

Because you see during those years that man is going to work, maintaining a certain lifestyle, people around the world are dying, from poverty, from war, what have you. And on some of those days that man is going to work and coming home
while his country is at war, outright bombing people in other countries and they are dying. And yet.

And yet he parks in the same spot, goes home at the same time.

“That is nothing unusual. His parents, wife, children and friends expect nothing less. But is it the Christian response? Hardly.”

“Make ... the ... sons of bitches kill you.”

He leaned forward and whispered like the Godfather.

Now Mars did not care if they liked him.

The bones of his jaws showed like ripples in the water portending a shark below.

He made direct eye contact with three people, as he had been taught, not long enough to confront, but enough to show he was not afraid.

“Don’t seek to live so damned long that you finally have to be unplugged. Make the bastards come get you — make their terrible plans, hunt you down and fill you full of holes, just as they did our Lord Jesus Christ.

“And take that chance. The chance taken by Jesus the skinny guy with no money, no family, no friends, no career — no papers or books published — with only this one desperation shot at redemption, with one card to play that might mean he
would ever amount to something.

Take the chance that God is God.”

He pushed his papers together, looked up like Walter Cronkite at the end of the newscast, and smiled.

“Now, let us pray.”

If America Is
THE Dark Side

... who was Charles Bukowski?

"I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep."

— Charles Bukowski,
Ham on Rye, 1982

"This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . ."

— Charles Bukowski, Barfly, 1987

"It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"

— Charles Bukowski, Factotum, 1975

"... the average American citizen male bread-winner is a horror to behold. He is a sight to make one vomit blood and gut and hope all out, for even when he smiles, even when he is kind, even when he is a winner, a lover, a father, a playboy, a champ, he stinks. He is rot, he is a flower without a head, a plant without a root, a slab of meat butchered and dressed in clothing."

— Charles Bukowski
April 6, 1966Screams From The Balcony

"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."

— Charles Bukowski,The Captain Is Out to Lunch
and the Sailors Have
Taken Over the Ship, 1998

— Hunter S. Thompson

"There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying — and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense ... Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool.

"The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory ... Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.

"The old man was the real tip-off.

"The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's."

by Daniel Berrigan

Dan Berrigan's Meditation
on the Action of the Catonsville 9

On May 17th, 1968, Nine people, including Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother Father Phillip Berrigan, entered a draft board and removed draft files of those who were about to be sent to Viet Nam.

They took these files outside and burned them with home-made napalm, a weapon commonly used on civilians by the U.S. forces. They then awaited their arrest by authorities. The following is the statement Dan Berrigan read in court during their trial.

Some ten or twelve of us (the number is still uncertain)
will, if all goes well (ill?) take our religious bodes
during this week
to a draft center in or near Baltimore

There we shall of purpose and forethought
remove the 1-A files sprinkle them in the public street
with home-made napalm and set them afire

For which act we shall beyond doubt
be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives
in consequence of our inability
to live and content in the plagued city
to say "peace peace" when there is no peace
to keep the poor poor
the thirsty and hungry thirsty and hungry

Our apologies good friends
for the fracture of good order the burning of paper
instead of children, the angering of the orderlies
in the front parlor of the charnel house

We could not so help us God do otherwise
For we are sick at heart our hearts
give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children
and for thinking of that other Child of whom
the poet Luke speaks The infant was taken up
in the arms of an old man whose tongue
grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty

And the old man spoke: this child is set
for the fall and rise of many in Israel
a sign that is spoken against

Small consolation a child born to make trouble
and to die for it the First Jew (not the last)
to be subject of a "definitive solution"

And so we stretch out our hands
to our brothers throughout the world
We who are priests to our fellow priests
All of us who act against the law
turn to the poor of the world to the Vietnamese
to the victims to the soldiers who kill and die
for the wrong reasons for no reason at all
because they were so ordered by the authorities
of that public order which is in effect
a massive institutionalized disorder

We say: Killing is disorder
life and gentleness and community and unselfishness
is the only order we recognize

For the sake of that order
we risk our liberty our good name
The time is past when good men may be silent
when obedience
can segregate men from public risk
when the poor can die without defense

How many indeed must die
before our voices are heard
how many must be tortured dislocated
starved maddened?

How long must the world's resources
be raped in the service of legalized murder?

When at what point will you say no to this war?

We have chosen to say
with the gift of our liberty
if necessary our lives:
the violence stops here
the death stops here
the suppression of the truth stops here
this war stops here

Redeem the times!
The times are inexpressibly evil
Christians pay conscious indeed religious tribute
to Caesar and Mars
by the approval of overkill tactics by brinkmanship
by nuclear liturgies by racism by support of genocide

They embrace their society with all their heart
and abandon the cross
They pay lip service to Christ
and military service to the powers of death

And yet and yet the times are inexhaustibly good
solaced by the courage and hope of many
The truth rules Christ is not forsaken
In a time of death some men
the resisters those who work hardily for social change
those who preach and embrace the truth
such men overcome death
their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection
the truth has set them free
In the jaws of death
they proclaim their love of the brethren

We think of such men
in the world in our nation in the churches
and the stone in our breast is dissolved
we take heart once more.

The 3-day event will culminate
in a rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield
Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone considering risking arrest
on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training
session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone coming from out of town
and need housing
contact the DMCW for
hospitality.

*Anyone considering risking arrest on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone coming from out of town
and need housing
contact the DMCW for
hospitality.

*Anyone considering risking arrest on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training session at the Berrigan House.

The Des Moines Catholic Worker announces The Iowa Healthcare Action
that will take place July 25-27, 2009, in Des Moines, Iowa.

The event is part of the "Insurance Profits Make Us Sick"
Campaign that began in March.

The event brings Dr. Margaret Flowers as its keynote speaker on
Sunday, July 26, 7:30 p.m. at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines. Dr. Flowers, a Baltimore-area pediatrician is co-chair the
Maryland chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Flowers
was arrested May 5, 2009, when they tried to persuade the Senate
Finance Committee to include Single-Payer in Healthcare Reform
considerations. Her actions led to her ultimately testifying as an
expert witness on Single-Payer at a Senate roundtable forum on June
11.

The 3-day event will culminate in a Rally followed by a direct-action
at Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Headquarters in Des Moines.

*Anyone coming from out of town
and need housing
contact the DMCW for
hospitality.

*Anyone considering risking arrest on Monday must attend the Monday
morning Action Planning and Training session at the Berrigan House.

Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem. We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.

Something Here
Just Not Right

... ever get that feeling?

"You're here because you know something.
What you know you can't explain — but you feel it.

You've felt it your entire life;
that there's something wrong with the world;
you don't know what it is, but it's there,
like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.

It is this feeling that has brought you to me.

Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"The Matrix," Neo asks?

You can feel it when you go to work,
when you go to church,
when you pay your taxes;
it is the world that
has been pulled over your eyes
to blind you from the truth."

And Neo asks, "What truth?"

"That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else,
you were born into bondage; born into a
prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch;
a prison for your mind.

I think it's very good.
Talks about the various conspiracies.
I think listening to this interview has nothing to do with being a conspiracy nutjob.
I think it has to do with being a responsible person, citizen, someone who cares enough to know the true history of his or her country.

"Lies & Liars"by Ben Heine

1. The troops are not heroes.
They are criminals.
Any welcome-home parade should
proceed to the county courthouse.

“I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11,” he said, speaking before a red curtain and six pairs of U.S. and Egyptian flags. “But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.”

— Barack Obama, June 4, 2009, Cairo

November 10, 2001
— President George W. Bush Speaks to United Nations

"We must speak the truth about terror.
Let us never tolerate outrageous
conspiracy theories concerning
the attacks of September the 11th;
malicious lies that attempt to
shift the blame away from the terrorists,
themselves, away from the guilty.
To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance
the cause of terror."

Those are the words of liars, now here is what someone looks like, when caught out in the open with the world watching, who is complicit in murder and treason.

"What is most extraordinary about the United States today is the rejection and defiance, in so many attitudes, of the all-pervasive historical and contemporary propaganda of the "invisible government". Credible polls have long confirmed that more than two-thirds of Americans hold progressive views. A majority want the government to care for those who cannot care for themselves. They would pay higher taxes to guarantee health care for everyone. They want complete nuclear disarmament; 72 per cent want the US to end its colonial wars; and so on. They are informed, subversive, even "anti-American".

"I once asked a friend, the great American war correspondent and humanitarian Martha Gellhorn, to explain the term to me. "I'll tell you what ‘anti-American' is," she said. "It's what governments and their vested interests call those who honour America by objecting to war and the theft of resources and believing in all of humanity.

"There are millions of these
anti-Americans in the United States.

"They are ordinary people who belong to no elite and who judge their government in moral terms, though they would call it common decency. They are not vain. They are the people with a wakeful conscience, the best of America's citizens. They can be counted on. They were in the South with the civil rights movement, ending slavery.

"They were in the streets, demanding an end to the wars in Asia. Sure, they disappear from view now and then, but they are like seeds beneath the snow. I would say they are truly exceptional."

I Guess

I'm Not

An Obama Fan

After all

by Mike Palecek

I got the idea to start this website after Barack Obama was elected.

Maybe others went through this as well, but it was kind of hard to switch from being against something, to being for something.

But I decided this would be a great opportunity to say what-if.

What if we could really do the things that would make us the America we think we are?

What if we could get some questions answered.

What if we could take some bold steps and say, so what? We don't live forever anyway, so why not go for the gusto?

But, you know all that money that was contributed to the Obama campaign?

Well, I guess when you think about it, it didn't come from the poor. It came from the rich. And that's who is still in charge.

As with the health insurance debate, Obama is going to hedge his bets and let the poor die.

He's going to kill when he thinks it's "prudent," and he is going to focus on doing what is necessary to remain in power.

Truth and justice for the poor will not be the driving forces of this administration.

I guess.

That's what it's looking like.

Barack Obama believes, or says he believes, that it was Al-Qaida who attacked American on Sept. 11, 2001, and that he needs to destroy them in Afghanistan because of that.

He will not go after the real perpetrators, or even conduct a cursory look-see under the White House beds, rather will send wave after wave of drones to kill the poor in Afghanistan to make it look as though he cares.

When you care, you don't kill — you seek truth and you seek justice for the poor.

Happenings passed on by Frank Cordaro of the Des Moines Catholic Worker.

(Posted because it says so well what many are discovering about the
Obama administration. FC)

"No we can't
because I voted for wars"

by David Smithers
Wellman, Iowa

I voted for Obama-Biden last November. I voted for hope. I did not think I was voting for more war. A lot of things I voted for may not be addressed because war is a sport that sucks the air out of a presidential administration and drains the spirit of a nation.

I voted for health care for all. I wanted support for HR 676, the Conyers "Medicare for all" to be a part of the debate about our people and about single payer health insurance would benefit economic growth

I voted so that no human is illegal. Our racist immigration laws and attitudes are an affront to the values our nation should aspire to and ignores the fact that our culture and our economy are enriched when our borders are more open and our hearts are open as well. Prosperity depends on our border being a symbol of human rights for all who choose to cross it peacefully and openly.

I voted for employee free choice legislation to tighten rules against union busting and illegitimate employer interference against employee organizing. It would allow a majority card check of employee interest to obviate the need for an election. An attitude of Union yes reinforces economic human rights. That is good for citizen workers. That will reduce exploitation of immigrant workers.

I voted for increased funding and emphasis on science and space exploration. We can build spaceships and atom smashers. Basic science costs money. But, the money is not nearly as much as from the waste of wars. We could stabilize our climate, protect our environment, green our jobs, and reduce hunger and obesity.

Yes we can.

But no we can't, and we won't.

The wars will sink everything.

The wars will extinguish the flame of hope.

We will forget to relight the candle, and we will not do what we want, can, and should.

Hey, came across this, somehow, who knows how you find anything on the web when you are watching Sports Center out of the corner of your eye and also looking for the latest on the BFRO, MUFON, 9/11 Blogger websites. You know?

This is Marilyn Buck. She's an American and she's in prison. She's been in prison forever. That's a long time in my view.

All I can say is wow. And all I am going to do today is workout on the eliptical, take a nap in my car and go walk in the woods, and then tomorrow back to work and work all weekend. IF there is a heaven, you won't see me there, but I bet you will see Marilyn Buck. Tell her I said, hey.

Marilyn Buck

Incommunicado:
Dispatches from a Political Prisoner
by Marilyn Buck

September 11, 2001

before
morning-slow
I move
Julan hollers
come come see
the world trade center's
exploding

she's not serious
no one would make that up
would they?
maybe
live on TV
video mantra
replay: plane crash
replay: collapse
slow motion, dying morning

no not a made-for-TV movie
not a disaster film
not Hollywood special effects
one tower falls
the other follows

9/11 no prisoner may speak to you
you may not speak to any prisoner
9/12 overheard voices
there are terrorists here
who are the terrorists?
silence, everyone behind her door listens
9/14 a legal call
small relief: it's political -- Washington --
not something i did
9/17 no more calls
no visits
no mail
until further notice

incommunicado
i hang from a winding string
winding in this cocoon
i breathe deep
the air isn't good here

(from outside the walls Susan yells
you are not alone)
i breathe deeper

i remember another September 11: Chile '73
more than 3,000 dead
tortured assassinated disappeared
a CIA-supported coup
(the WTC bombers not-yet-born)
many people there still mourn
let us mourn all the dead
and the soon-to-die

i worry about the prisoners
isolation sucks at the spirit

i am furious: inferred association
held hostage in place of men
with u.s. weapons and CIA training
an infernal joke
the puppet masters laugh

i laugh to stay sane
before i explode in irony's flame

we are hostages
to blood-thirsty oil men
ready to splatter deserts
with daisy-cutters
their collateral damage
dead mothers and children
dead mother earth
dead daisies

(hasn't this happened before?
u.s. cavalry and smallpox blankets
special forces and blanket bombing)

(Susan is back
she taps on the wall: you are not alone)

i walk around the edges
how many walk on edges?
what edges do the Palestinians walk?

panic rises in my throat
thick white choking cold
so cold
i swing hope on a thread
a transparent sliver it crashes
against the cinderblocks
i drop
frozen chrysalis
cold into a coffin box

Night

i lay down on suspect blankets
a Cyclops light pins me
onto the metal cot
an altar for vengeful gods
metal restraints for hands and feet
"just in case"

the suicide cell has ghosts
desperate women
have lain here chained four-pointed
to command composure
sacrificed to voyeur visions
through the glass starkly
through a burqa window

i don't want to think of i
i meditate
i think of other politicals
behind wires and walls
i remember the assaulted
the accidental
the collaterally damaged
killed, corrected, coerced
i remember: the u.s. funds the fundamentalists
Muslims Christians Zionists
self-righteous missiles
of mayhem and retribution

silence flees before sudden cacophony
two women beat plastic bowls on metal doors
we want rec we want rec
the sun is out we want out
my head is wrapped in metallic clanger
bang bang bang
i stay silent
i bite my lip

hours pass: shift change 2:00
the sun drops fast behind the wall
finally: who wants recreation?
I do
me too
let me out first
voices reach through the metal doors
food traps clank
handcuffs click
one by one women are led
to wire cages
joy rings louder than the chains

i wait
no guard comes
i break silence
you didn’t ask me
disembodied denial echoes through the walls
you can’t go with the others
wait
not my decision
i will miss the sundrops

the captain appears
we may release you today after 2:00
2:00 comes and goes
the shift changes
i wait and wonder: will other politicals be released today
i wait
hope is the moment's thief
don't wait!

at last: Buck roll out
i leap a jack-in-the-box
ready
ready
the metal key clangs just before the 4:00 count
i gasp relief
and hurry through before the gates slam
shut and i am left below
Eurydice whom Orpheus glimpsed
a moment soon

i step out
a four o'clock unfolding, fuchsia in the shading light
back into the routine prisoner's plight

December 2001

This poem appeared in Joy James, editor, Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion, March 2003

And, finally, here's something ...

I was notified recently by the Internal Revenue Service that I have been fined $5,000 for "frivolous filing" of a tax document.

The story, quickly:

In the spring of 2007 and the spring of 2008 I took a book tour around the country. In 2007 I went east and in 2008 I went west.

Each time before I left home I sent a letter and a tax form to the IRS.

The forms each had a black Magic Marker "X" through them.

The letters indicated why I did not wish to cooperate with the United States of America.

It was symbolic. They had already received my money through paycheck withholding tax.

But even though merely symbolic, it's something, some very little thing, in an effort to stand with those who have been stomped on by the government of George W. Bush, those in Iraq, and those in the United States, who have gone without health care, decent schools, roads, lived in poverty so that we might spread the American empire across the globe.

And it is now apparent that having a Democrat in the White House means only more of the same, a lesson we might have learned from living through the Clinton years, the bombing of Iraq, the sanctions on Iraq that killed millions, the increase in prison construction, the "reform" of welfare etc.

These people. These people have everything on their minds but public service.

My impression is they have power and the keeping of that power on their minds. We imagine that people who seek public office want to work for the social welfare and would naturally want to know the truth, but so often and for so many years we have been disappointed by putting our faith in our political leaders.

We have a semblance of representation, but not in reality.

Nobody asks you if you want to build more prisons. Nobody asks you if you want to bomb children in Iraq. Nobody asks you if you want your money to go to the poor, to schools, to roads.

Nobody ever asks.

So sometimes, sometimes you just have to tell them.

Every year we are asked to pay our taxes, send in our forms, pay for the bullets, the bombs that kill the children, the men and women.

We are given no choice.

Just as we were given no choice as children whether or not to rise before class and say the pledge of allegiance to America's wars.

We're not children anymore.

Our acquiesance has real consequence.

We pay to have people killed so that America and America's businesses may expand influence and market area.

I don't want to believe that.

I want to rather believe in the America I believed in when I walked alone into Mrs. Steele's kindergarten class and saw written across the giant blackboard in gigantic white chalk letters: President John F. Kennedy.

But.

They killed Kennedy and America has never been the same since.

But the ideal remains.

The dream of a good and just America remains.

We may never get there, but we must try.

We must try.

Also:
*When I was the Iowa Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, Fifth District, in 2000, I sent a similar letter to the IRS. That year I walked from my home to Sioux City, taking about a week, to deliver the letter.

That year I also received letters from the IRS, saying I owed them $500 for frivolous filing. I received two of those letters, followed by a final letter that said they had decided to forget about the penalty.

It is crossed-out because I do not wish to cooperate with the government of George W. Bush.

President Bush has chosen to spend our tax dollars on war and killing while cutting spending on social programs.

As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.

I must protest.

Sincerely,

Mike Palecek
702 6th Ave.
Sheldon, Iowa 51201

March 27, 2007

Internal Revenue Service
Kansas City, MO 64999-002

Hello,

Enclosed is a crossed-out tax form.

I will not cooperate with the murderous regime of George W. Bush.

President Bush and his administration planned and carried out the attacks on the United States on 9-11-01, in order to attack Iraq and steal their oil.

In the eyes of Bush and Cheney and Rove, the war is going according to plan. They and their friends are making millions, billions, from the oil, from the defense industry, while the poor go without, while social services are cut in order to pay for more war and killing.

As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.

I must protest.

Sincerely,

Mike Palecek

Mike Palecek, 53, lives in Sheldon, Iowa. He is a former federal prisoner for peace, serving time in county jails and federal prisons for protest against the United States military. Originally from Norfolk, Nebraska, he is a former small-town newspaper reporter, editor, publisher. He was the Iowa Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives, 5th District, 2000 election. He received 65,000 votes on an anti-military, anti-prison, pro-immigration platform. He currently works at a group home for adolescent boys in northwest Iowa. He is the author of several novels. Covers, descriptions can be viewed by visiting the website The New American Dream: www.newamericandream.net

"If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday,
Assassinated on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday ..."

“I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, when you win, you go into this smokey room, and this little screen comes down … and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before … and the lights go up … and they go to the new president … any questions?”

On this video on this website, two citizen investigators speak to cab driver Lloyde England, who claims his taxi was hit by a light pole that was sheared off by the plane that hit the Pentagon, even though witnesses say the plane's actual flight path was not where England's taxi was sitting with a hole in the windshield.

This dialogue with an interviewer seems to suggest that England was part of the plot, or has knowledge about the plot beyond what he has thus far revealed.

Why isn't Katie Couric talking to Mr. England? Could it be that Couric and Rather et al are not real reporters, but CIA or NSA agents?

Just asking.

Just asking.

_______________

England: “You gotta understand something. When people do things and get away with it, you…eventually it’s gonna come to me, and when it comes to me, it’s gonna be so big, I can’t do nothing about it.”

England: I wasn’t supposed to be involved with this, this is too big for me, man, this is a big thing. This is a world thing happening, I’m a small man…I’m not supposed to be involved in this. This is for other people, people who have money and all this kind of stuff.

Interviewer: Your point that these people who have all the money…

England: This is their thing.

Interviewer: This is their event.

England: This is for them.

Interviewer: Meaning they’re doing it for their own reasons…

England: (with conviction) That’s right. I’m not supposed to be in it.

Interviewer: They must have planned it.

England: It was planned.

England: You know what history is? It’s not the truth. It’s “his story.” Has nothing to do with the truth.

"We'll know our disinformation program is
complete when everything
the American public believes is false."
— William Casey, CIA Director
(from first staff meeting, 1981)

____________________

“You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.”
— Carved into the marble entrance to CIA Headquarters

* the deaths of the 60-some people on the Pine Ridge reservation during the reign of terror by goon squads, death squads — like those we also sponsored in El Salvador — around the time of the Wounded Knee and Oglala events

"I will stand with my brothers and sisters. I will tell the truth about them and about why we went to Wounded Knee. I will fight for my people. I will live for them, and if it is necessary to stop the terrible things that happen to Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation, I am ready to die for them. But the judge and his lawyers must know by now I will never lie against my people, crawl for a better deal for myself. I stand with Russell Means, Gladys Bissonette, Carter Camp, Ellen Moves Camp, Clyde Bellecourt..."

— an affidavit presented to the court on June 27, 1973 by Pedro Bissonette

"Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede
any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not
believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns,
but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals."
— Lucy Parsons

“We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace.
War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.
If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.”
— A.J. Muste

Mary Beth Schlagheck (on left) and Helen Woodson, chained to the Catholic cathedral in downtown Madison, circa 1982. They were protesting the national bishops' statement regarding the morality of nuclear weapons possession and use.

Those who stood up to the Bush administration when the going was tough, after 9/11, before the start of the war, during the war — those are the folks who should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize.

It really should be that scared someone in Shitstorm, South Dakota, who wrote that letter to the editor against the wishes of her husband, her children and her best friend and sent it to The Shitstorm Sentinel
— and accepted the consequences.

But in lieu of her, we offer these suggestions.
There are a million others:

... Fort Benning, Georgia. August 9, 1983. The summer sun was finally setting. It was time to act. Time to engage the Salvadoran troops.

... Moments later the voice of the dead Salvadoran archbishop, Oscar Romero, boomed in Spanish from the treetops, shattering the silence below:

"I would like to make a special appeal to the members of the army and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are the same people. The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear the voice of a man commanding you to kill, remember instead the voice of God: THOU SHALL NOT KILL!"

It was the archbishop's last Sunday homily, delivered in the San Salvador cathedral on March 23, 1980. His fateful words had stung the Salvadoran military and led to his assassination the next day.

Romero's words again triggered a violent reaction as they echoed through the barracks at Fort Benning, imploring the startled Salvadorans to disobey orders to kill. It was as if someone had poked a beehive.

The base was abuzz.

Lights beamed.

Sirens wailed.

MPs with M-16s swarmed over the grounds.

But in the darkness they had trouble locating the source of the disturbance, even with the aid of police dogs.

"It was a sacred moment," Bourgeois later recalled.

"Those soldiers coming out of the barracks,
looking into the sky, not being able to see us, hearing the words of this prophet."

"It was a sacred moment," Bourgeois later recalled. "Those soldiers coming out of the barracks, looking into the sky, not being able to see us, hearing the words of this prophet."

Finally, one of the lights fixed on the rope ladder at the base of the pine, and then illuminated the trespassers in the tree.

The MPs started cursing and threatening to shoot them down, but even with weapons trained on him Bourgeois stalled for time, hoping to play the entire homily.

He shouted down that they no longer had the rope ladder, and as the MPs scurried about trying to figure out what to do, the tape played over and over.

"No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. There is still time for you to obey your own conscience, even in the face of a sinful command to kill. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, and of the dignity of each human being, cannot remain silent in the presence of such abominations."

"In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people whose cries rise up to heaven, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you, stop the repression!"

As the chaos on the ground grew, the dogs started to fight among themselves. A couple of MPs tried to pull them apart, while another started to climb the pine, grabbing branches of nearby trees to pull himself up.

Then another went up with the rope ladder. Rosebaugh, whose perch was lowest in the tree, was taken down first, then Ventimigila. Rosebaugh was strip searched and Ventimigila was gagged.

Meanwhile, the first MP had climbed nearly sixty feet up to get Bourgeois and to shut off the cassette. After Romero's voice was silenced, Bourgeois started shouting the bishop's words in Spanish, angering the MPs on the ground.

When he finally descended the tree, a trainer was waiting for him.

"He hit me from behind," Bourgeois said later, "then threw me up against the tree and stripped me. There were five or six agitated dogs and about ten MPs with M-16s who were shining lights on us. The trainer got in this karate pose and wanted me to get up and fight, but his own men pulled him off."

As he was led away that night, Bourgeois was largely undaunted: the message had been delivered, the mission accomplished.

The three activists carried no identification. When questioned at the provost marshal's office, Bourgeois gave his name as Oscar Romero; Rosebaugh, as Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest slain by the Salvadoran military; and Ventimiglia, as Jean Donovan, one of four U.S. churchwomen raped and murdered by Salvadoran security forces.

by James Hodge and Linda Cooper
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308.

Marcin is a professional Polish painter and illustrator.
He lives in Poland as a freelance artist. He regularly
publishes his cartoons on several websites and collaborates
with a wide range of renowned magazines and newspapers.